Ideas for a salad...

Good. Maybe a clove of garlic? Something?

Now that we've defined hot dish, it's time to define "salad".

Roughly, "salad" is anything not "hot dish."

Red apples, Cool Whip and snickers bars? That's salad.

Pineapple and lime jello? You bet. Heckuva deal. Salad.

Anything you can think of with pasta and mayonnaise. Sure thing. Call it salad.

Leftover easter ham thrown through the food processor with mayo and mustard added? You guessed it. Ham salad.

 

"Well, last week we had lasagna, then it become spaghetti and when it's finally unrecognizable, they call it Hot Dish."

Bad movie. Real bad movie.

 

Problem this time of year is that, after being spoiled with ripe local tomatoes until a couple weeks ago, they really suck bad. We ate at a restaurant Sunday and the tomater in the salad was pink. Why bother? Anyone with any sense is going to eat around it. It's basically a garnish now, an inedible mealy blob.

Pears are good right now, and ripe ones are great in salad with some crumbled blue cheese.

Orange slices can replace tomatoes. It'd be real good if you could mash up some raspberries and drizzle that over an orange-cuke-lettuce salad.

Roast some red peppers in the broiler, put in a paper bag to cool (and steam the skin, so it's easy to peel off). Saute some mushrooms and garlic in olive oil and add to lettuce and cukes with some grated parmesan, balsamic vinegar.

Grilled or fried zucchini and onions, roasted red peppers, lettuce, cukes, crumbled bacon, some kind of crumbly cheese (goat, blue, feta), oil, vinegar, salt, pepper, lots of oregano (fresh if you can get it).

Fresh herbs really add some zing to a salad. Oregano is my favorite, but basil, mint, tarragon, even rosemary.

If you can get melon -- watermelon, honeydew, cantelope -- they taste good with greens and vinegar-oil.

I'm not big on raw apples in salads, but roasted apples are pretty good with some grated sharp cheddar, greens and cukes, vinegar and oil, maybe some cinnamon.

I use fruit a lot when the tomatoes aren't in season locally.

 

Shouldn't it be, "You betcha," rather than, "You bet"?

 

Do you have any idea how hard it is to try to find a decent picture of a tator tot hot dish??

 

Same deal, there.

 

does that one have beans or corn?

 

No, 'you bet' was the proper usage in that case.

 

Green beans. It's hot dish, remember?

 

lol. you rule, rosie.

 

Thinking about it now, my mom used to make another "hot dish," one that she totally made up out of the blue. She calls it "Cultural Confusion," and it was the product of not having the ingredients for any particular meal, so she just slapped something together. There's pasta (shells), chicken, Ro-tel, cream of mushroom, evaporated milk and a shitload of cheddar cheese. I think that's all. Bake it up and eat it for about four days. Pretty tasty.

I'm really trying to figure out why my mom never told me she was a viking.

 

Rosie, if it's not too late I'll get this thread back on track:

SEVEN LAYER SALAD

1 head lettuce, chopped
1 layer celery, chopped
1 layer onions, chopped
4 hard boiled eggs
1 layer frozen peas, raw
1 layer bacon bits
2 c. salad dressing (Miracle Whip or mayonaise)
1 tbsp. sugar
4 oz. taco cheese

Add all ingredients in given order by layers. Add the 1 tablespoon sugar to the salad dressing, and sprinkle the taco cheese on the top.